‘He’d arrived from Eritrea via Libya and Italy, and hoped to get to England. I thought he looked incredibly classy in his turquoise coat and pink scarf’
I took this eight years ago in an underpass beneath the metro line that runs through the north of Paris. The place used to be a haven for hundreds of refugees, mostly from Africa. It’s near La Chapelle station, between Gare du Nord and the intersection of very popular Indian, Arab and African neighbourhoods; it’s wind-beaten and extremely noisy because of the constant movement of the trains.
I’ve been a photographer for 40 years, and started taking photographs in La Chapelle 20 years ago because it’s my neighbourhood and it seemed necessary, politically, to develop my work locally. I hung out in this square and came to know many people from Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, but I had never seen this young man before. We didn’t talk much and I know almost nothing about him. He spoke a little English and a little Arabic, he was from Eritrea and had just arrived in Paris. Like many refugees, he had travelled here across Libya, the Mediterranean and then Italy. He was planning to leave for Calais the next day to try to get to England.
